As more satellites are deployed into orbit to work in concert with other satellites in a constellation, the control and command of these satellites becomes more complex. As the size of a constellation grows, its operation becomes more expensive and complex. The historic method of manually tasking satellites by human operators is not scalable enough to meet the demands of large satellite constellations.
It is likely that most successful commercial satellite constellations will include numerous CubeSats, given their small form factor. CubeSats are generally deployed in low orbits, thereby limiting the length of communication windows in which the CubeSats and their related ground station networks can “talk” to each other. This can make manual commanding time consuming, inefficient at best, and completely ineffective at worst, particularly in constellations that include a variety of satellites having different capabilities and different versions of hardware and/or software. Small constellations having just a few (<10) satellites, can sometimes be controlled (with limited success) by a dedicated operator issuing manual commands. However, as more satellites are deployed in a constellation to provide improved spatial coverage, reduced revisit time, and reduced message latency, etc., the control of such a constellation can create many challenges in data collection, power management, processing, communications, coordination, etc. A need exists for improved systems and methods to address such challenges.